The Apple store disappeared earlier today with a "back soon" notice on it. When it reappeared, I spied you can now order Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard for shipping by October 26th. 

Various Mac rumour sites had been touting this as a likely date for some time - but it's nice to know it's confirmed as nearly here.

There appear to be 300 new features including some interesting security additions which my friend Chris pointed out to me.

I particularly want to use the built-in backup stuff - called Time Machine which promises to make backups easy and sexy at the same time. 

The big news tho' seems to be the arrival of the mega-hyped iPhone on November 9th. Come to think of it - I could do with a new phone...